Note that sometimes the franchise turns out to be Not Quite Dead, and can be salvaged with a Continuity Reboot. If the franchise experiences what should have been a Franchise Killer but carries on regardless, it's a Franchise Zombie. Occasionally it's a Stillborn Franchise, an all-new product for which plans for sequels were made and then scrapped when it was discovered that the product was crap, or so hyped up that the creators have unrealistic expectations of its success. Or it just didn't profit enough, even though it was a Cult Classic.

For many Video Game companies, shipping a Franchise Killer is also a Creator Killer, either through bankruptcy, no-one wanting to forward them the funding to continue making games, or in the modern world of mega-corporations owning every studio as a subsidiary of the larger corporation, the executives in charge of the conglomerate deciding to shut the studio having wrung the last vestiges of profit out of the intellectual property the studio was bought for, or using them as scapegoats for poor performance financially speaking. Or in some cases, actual poor performance as a studio.

Examples

The Gundam franchise had been on shaky grounds for several years, in part due to low ratings, but also the conflicted leadership of Sunrise, the studio behind the series. The last televised installment to take place in the Universal Century continuity, Victory Gundam was under massive pressure from main sponsor Bandai, resulting in a reshuffling of early episodes to showcase the titular mecha of the show earlier, and the addition of several toyetic mechs later in the shows run. Yet the show did not prove to have satisfactory sales, and combined with Sunrise being bought out by Bandai, was replaced with the extremely different Alternate UniverseG Gundam, which featured many, many Gundams, and has an extensive toyline. The ratings for the series did not improve, but the toy sales went up, setting a precedent for future TV shows to always be set in alternate universes. The Universal Century still lives on though, quite successfully at that, with OVAs like The 08th MS Team and Gundam Unicorn setting sales records.

Gundam X's ratings almost killed the franchise, presumably due to there having been Gundam on screen every week for 4 years at that point. The series disappeared off TV for 3 years until the similarly unsuccessful Turn A Gundam (although the series continued on Video and Film with The 08th MS Team and Endless Waltz). It was not until the massively successful Mobile Suit Gundam SEED that the series was revitalized. Gundam X is one of only two Gundam TV series to be cut short of a full two-season run. The first? The original Mobile Suit Gundam; it's easy to forget given what a massive franchise it has become when the original installment had poor ratings.

In America, it was Gundam SEED that killed the franchise. In this case, one can blame the heavy edits Toonami made. Desperate to air the show in a daytime slot, Cartoon Network's cuts turned the show into a complete mess, most notably by forcing the series to Never Say "Die", drastically changing battle scenes, and featuring the use of the notorious Disco Guns. In spite of the show's serious nature, the bizarre and drastic edits caused the fanbase to not take the show seriously and it showed in the ratings. By episode 26, the series could only be seen at Friday at midnight. After its shaky run, Gundam would go back to being only seen on DVD until SyFy revived the franchise by airing Mobile Suit Gundam 00.

Its sequel Gundam SEED Destiny managed to kill Sunrise's official English-language Gundam message board (the centerpiece of the English language website), despite not even airing outside of Japan until years later (and even then it only aired in Canada). Numerous American fans were watching fansubs of the SEED Destiny episodes within days of their air dates (or even sooner in the case of American fans who speak Japanese, which in the Gundam fandom turns out to be a surprisingly large number) and thus it was the biggest topic of discussion the message board (without, of course, the fansub aspect being mentioned; it was the official message board after all). The extremely divided fan opinion about SEED Destiny is well known, but the disagreements were kept mostly civil. And then the final episode aired, and the opinions voiced on the message board were almost universally (and often quite vehemently) negative, even among those who'd generally approved of the way the story had gone in the second half. Shortly afterward (and without advance notice), Sunrise pulled the plug on the message board entirely, leaving GundamOfficial.com little more than an empty shell that to this day no longer gets updated (when Gundam 00 aired on SyFy, it was given its own separate English-language website).note Particularly tragic in that Mark Simmons' excellent fansite "Gundam Project" was shut down after he was hired by Sunrise to run GundamOfficial.com. In fact, given that the SEED Destiny finale aired in Japan less than six months after the SEED finale aired in North America (many Gundam fans, especially those newly-introduced to the franchise, went straight from watching SEED in English to watching fansubs of SEED Destiny), this incident may have even played a role in Gundam's long disappearance from American TV broadcasts, with Sunrise drawing the (ridiculously false) conclusion that negative reaction to the SEED Destiny finale meant that Americans just didn't like Gundam.

A movie meant to tie up the Cosmic Era timeline has been stuck in Development Hell for years (due to the declining health of one of the writers), and its fate is uncertain.

And well before the fallout of G Gundam and Gundam SEED, there was Toonami's broadcast of the original Mobile Suit Gundam, a series that was made in 1979 and had yet to receive any sort of modernization. It didn't help that Mobile Suit Gundam was following onto Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, a series that (at the time) was one of the more modern Gundam series (made in the 90s and all). The result? Mobile Suit Gundam never finished its initial run, with Cartoon Network claiming that it had been pulled due to 9/11. That being said however, it was briefly revisited during a New Year's Eve special, in which series belonging to favorite Toonami block villains (as voted upon by fans) were broadcast on the Midnight Run. Surprisingly, Char Aznable was voted near the top slot (beating out The Joker no less), and as a result Toonami ran the final two episodes of the series (specifically the Battle of A Bao A Qu) in his honor.

In Japan and amongst the world, the almost-franchise killer was Mobile Suit Gundam AGE. Stylistically, it was attacked for appearing to be a "kiddie" version of Gundam, but the series was actually one of the darkest in Gundam canon, with the series being introduced during a violent invasion attack, featuring a Villain Protagonist, and the first major antagonist being a seven-year-old. During much of the series, it was criticized as being the Cliché Storm of Gundam, drawing forth all the various tropes and themes that were utilized in the other installments to fill out the story. The overall reaction and viewership decline of the series resulted in Gundam being kicked off of the Tokyo Broadcasting System, where it had been part of the lineup for years. It would have killed off the franchise if not for the release of Gundam Build Fighters, which made up for the countless flak it received.

The main point of contention towards AGE was the Kio/Three Generation Arc. Up until that point, the series had actually been doing good, especially with its more likable second protagonist Asemu Asuno. When Kio took over, things looked like it was going to head in that same direction, but when Kio took Kira Yamato's famed pacifism and took it to new levels that infuriated fans, that is when AGE took a nosedive and nearly killed the franchise.

Other Series

The anime Digimon Frontier, which followed the popularDigimon Tamers, killed the anime franchise for three years due to leaning back on a Henshin Hero concept instead of the Mons that the entire intellectual property is based on. Its successor, Digimon Savers, didn't do well enough to keep the franchise on hiatus for another three years.

In America, Savers (re-titled as Digimon Data Squad for English audiences) killed the franchise. In this case, Toon Disney's treatment of the series is probably to blame. Desperate to get the Digimon craze over with, Toon Disney's edits ended up turning Data Squad into a 4Kids-like disaster, removing numerous references to Japanese culture and replacing it with an American-oriented one, making a villain in one episode go from a giant bomb to a giant orange fruit and threaten to flood an amusement park instead of blowing it up, all scenes of characters brandishing firearms cut, forcing characters to Never Say "Die" and character deaths excised. The mess Toon Disney made was so distressing that pre-existing Digimon fans refused to watch it. Once the dub ended its run, Disney sent the Digimon license back to Saban in 2010note As part of a deal that saw Saban reacquiring the rights to Power Rangers, and Savers' successor, Digimon Fusion, was finally picked up by Nickelodeon for an English dub in 2013.

After the first season aired, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya was the hottest otaku property around. Fans clamoured for a sequel for years. Then the sequels finally happened... three years later, in 2009/2010 with a second seasonnote Which included "Endless Eight." Eight episodes of the same events happening over and over again, wasting over half the series' content on the non-events of a short, 1-chapter story from the light novels. This really didn't help the franchise's reputation. and the well-received Disappearance movie. What little did anyone know at the time is that during those three years and counting were planted the roots of death: A Schedule Slip of the light novels since 2007 and still going, Kyoto Animation realizing that self-owned IPs would be economically more profitable for them in the long run than animating Kadokawa's IPs (of which Haruhi is one) and the demotion of Atsushi Ito, the man at Kadokawa who primarily pushed for Haruhi in anime form, all coalesced into no person being left around to champion for Haruhi, and so the series died a slow and painful death out of inactivity; nowadays, it's only the hardcore fans left wanting a third season. It's also telling that out of all the major properties for which Bandai Entertainment still had licenses at the time it left the North American anime market, Haruhi is the last to have its license picked up by another company. Even the first anime adaptation to be greenlit in years is an adaptation of one of itsspinoffs.

Shugo Chara!'s third season, Party! bombed so badly that it prevented the rest of the manga from getting adapted, and may have even had a hand in the manga itself's abrupt demise.

The third season of the Slayers anime, which diverged from the continuity from the light novels, wasn't as well-received when it came out, but even then, most prefer it now, because the new fourth and fifth seasons that came out eleven years after it were received poorly (and not well-made - Continuity Snarl, Conspicuous CG, and extreme Flanderization of the leading heroine, all thrown together with a sloppy plot.)

Tenchi Muyo!, another Anime International Company franchise, barely escaped this fate one year earlier with Tenchi in Tokyo. Despite being in most regards worse than El-Hazard: The Alternative World, Tenchi in Tokyo managed to last for a full 26 episodes, and only set back the franchise by 5 years instead of killing it altogether. In the same timeframe, attempts to adapt Tenchi Universe to the big screen were financial and critical failures, and the release of numerous alternate-timeline Tenchi media created a massive Continuity Snarlnote Tenchi in Tokyo was revealed halfway in its run to be a separate universe from Tenchi Universe, at the same time, a third movie was released based on a series of novels that diverged from the first six OVA episodes, ignoring the late ones, with the film itself taking place in the Tenchi Universe timeline.. The poor critical and fan reception of GXP and OVA 3 (both of which went back to Kajishima's original OVA timeline) put a nail in the coffin for the traditional Tenchi lineup, and Sasami Magical Girls Club killed the Pretty Sammy stuff. What would come after (War on Geminar) didn't feature any returning characters from the franchise, and only vaguely connected with any other part of Tenchi. The only thing the franchise has going for it now are shorts to promote tourism.

The Animated Adaptation of CLAMP's Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle came to a screeching halt after a lackluster second season that had almost nothing but Filler episodes when there was so much more material left to adapt. They tried to Retcon it in the Tokyo Revelations OVA (the adaptation of the Acid Tokyo arc in the manga), but the damage had already been done.

Zoids: Fuzors is often accused of being one of these by the English-speaking Zoids fanbase, but it was in fact the fan-favourite Zoids: Chaotic Century that killed the franchise, having gotten such low ratings during its run on Cartoon Network that it was cancelled, with the final four episodes only being shown after complaints from the fanbase. Fuzors was more of a last-ditch effort to salvage what was already a doomed franchise.

Similarly, in Japan, Zoids: Genesis was a franchise killer; the anime got a so-so reception, but The Merch failed to sell, effectively dooming the chances of another Zoids anime being made any time soon, and causing Tomy to change its marketing strategy by pandering exclusively to Otaku rather than general audiences as they did before.

The Black Cauldron itself almost became the franchise killer of the entireDisney Animated Canon. It cost the studio so much money they could only barely manage to get back up. Understandably, it took Cauldron till 1998 to get released on home video, though the success of The Little Mermaid was also to blame for that (Disney did intend to release Cauldron on video back in 1989).

There was actually a counter-service restaurant at Walt Disney World that opened in 1986 (replacing the "Lancer's Inn" that was around since the park's opening in 1971) called "Gurgi's Munchies and Crunchies" that was supposed to promote The Black Cauldron. Though the movie flopped, the restaurant itself lasted until 1992 (it was first replaced by a Beauty and the Beast-themed restaurant called "Lumiere's Kitchen", and now replaced with a Robin Hood-themed restaurant called "The Friar's Nook"). That said, no further movies based on the Chronicles of Prydain have been made since.

There was once a show at Tokyo Disneyland called "Cinderella Castle Mystery Tour" that focused on all of the Disney villains up to the Horned King. Similar to the restaurant example above, the show lasted long after Disney had given up on the franchise, running for over twenty years after the film was released.

To a lesser extent, Home on the Range killed Disney's traditional animation department and made them move into CGI. An attempt to move back into traditional animation in the late 2000s/early 2010s with The Princess and the Frog and Winnie-the-Pooh was unsuccessful as the two films were written off by the company as financial disappointments and led to ten members of the staff in the traditional animation department being handed their walking papers.note The Princess and the Frog actually did very well, earning $267 million at the box office. However, it was nowhere near the smash success of Tangled the next year (which earned $591 million), leading Disney to change Frozen from a traditionally animated film to a CG film. That being said, Winnie the Pooh did bomb at the box office (earning under budget), but it might have been a result of its simultaneous release alongside the final Harry Potter film, and a virtually nonexistent advertising campaign.

Originally, there was actually going to be a third film based on The Jungle Book where Baloo and Shere Khan are both captured and sold off of a circus, and as a result Mowgli, Shanti, and Bagheera actually all had to save them both. And over the course of the film, Shere Khan (who went into Knight of Cerebus mode in the second) would have actually regretted his hatred against humanity because of his capture and would have eventually reformed over the course of the film. However, due to the commercial and critical failure of The Jungle Book 2, this film was ultimately scrapped, and Khan's fate at the end of the sequel remained ambiguous.

Similarly to The Jungle Book above, there was originally going to be a third film in The Rescuers movie series. However, due to Down Under's financial failure (it's the only animated Disney movie released during The Renaissance Age of Animation for the studio, to ever suffer this fate), combined with the death of actress Eva Gabor (who voiced Miss Bianca), the idea for a third Rescuers movie was scrapped.

Diminishing home market sales and surprisingly disappointing merchandise sales were the reasons given by execs to discontinue DisneyToon Studios' direct-to-video Disney Fairies franchise, with the 2015 film Legend of the NeverBeast slated to be the final film of that series.

The critical and financial failure of Doug's 1st Movie led to the abandonment of whatever hopes Disney had for anymore films based on the Doug series; the film had been crafted as a direct response to the success of The Rugrats Movie by Nickelodeon, with the latter performing much better. For most, it felt more like an extended episode better suited for a Direct-to-DVD release.

Other

The failure of Happy Feet 2 at the box office pretty much put the kibosh on a potential Happy Feet film series. To this day even George Miller isn't sure how he's going to pull off a third film. Crucial co-star Robin Williamscommitting suicide several years later made the outcome of a third film even more uncertain.

Looney Tunes: Back in Action failure at the box office resulted in the Looney Tunes franchise (who in the 90s had a series of successful television spinoffs and a commercially successful feature film) to nearly fade into obscurity for almost a decade. A new batch of Looney Tunes shorts being made for theaters were cancelled in mid-production, and Looney Tunes shorts were even pulled from television reruns on Cartoon Network in October 2004. Heck, even future Tom and Jerry shorts that were pre-conceived at the same time were canned and tossed away. Only with the launch of The Looney Tunes Show were Looney Tunes shorts finally placed back in regular rotation on Cartoon Network.

The critical (but not financial, as it was the second-biggest moneymaker in the series) failure of Shrek the Third resulted in Dreamworks abandoning their planned fifth film Shrek Pleads the Fifth, and instead making the fourth installment, Shrek Goes Fourth, the final entry of the film franchise. Shrek Forever After, as the film was renamed, was followed by a Surprisingly Improved Spinoff, Puss in Boots, which was successful enough to spawn a sequel but not enough to revive the Shrek franchise proper. Despite this, Jeffrey Katzenberg still hopes that a fifth movie will happen.

The critical and financial failure of the infamous Tom and Jerry: The Movie (the one where the famously silent cat-and-mouse duo talk and sing) prevented the making of another theatrical Tom and Jerry film. Warner Bros. has been said to be working a live action-CG hybrid for the characters, but nothing is currently known.

The first two Crocodile Dundee films were tremendous hits, each grossing over $100 million at the North American box office alone. However, series star Paul Hogan and company took thirteen long years before making a third Croc picture, which ultimately underperformed at the box office (opening at #4 and grossing roughly $25 million domestically). Besides the long gap in-between the previous film, Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles seemed less serious than the previous two films (coming off as more of a broad family comedy) with a plot that felt left over from Beverly Hills Cop.

After Home Alone 3 flopped at the box office, FOX didn't release another Home Alone movie in theaters again-the next two movies were instead Direct-to-TV releases.

An attempted reboot of the franchise, Son of the Pink Panther, replaced Sleigh with Clouseau's illegitimate son (played by then up-and-coming actor Roberto Benigni). It was an enormous failure, receiving heavy criticism for Benigni's performance from both critics and fans alike. A sequel was inadmissible by then. It also had the misfortune of being Edwards' last film he produced (he ended up retiring from film after Son's massive failure became too much for him) as it was for, in another sense, composer Henry Mancini (who couldn't live to do another movie).

In 2006, the original story was given a major, modernized retooling in the form of a Continuity Reboot, with Steve Martin filling in for Sellers for his Clouseau character and the film dismissing the events of Trail of..., Curse of... and Son of.... The film was ravaged by critics, but performed well at the box office to become a Cult Classic, prompting the studio to order up a sequel for release in 2009. That sequel underperformed the first film and was ravaged even further by critics, thus putting plans for a third, trilogy-making film to a screeching halt. Odds are, it seems unlikely that another Pink Panther film will see the light of day again, and with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's bankruptcy the following year, its future remains more uncertain.

Police Academy 7: Mission to Moscow was released just before Labor Day weekend to a staggering gross of barely over $100,000. While this was a franchise that had been slowly withering since Steve Guttenberg left after the fourth film, that wasn't even a tenth of what Police Academy 6 had managed to pull in. By then, film critics who used to curse the films' success had completely forgotten it even existed. A relaunch is in the works.

Vegas Vacation was so out of touch with the previous films that it wasn't just this to the National Lampoon's Vacation series, but presumably to the remnants of the originalNational Lampoon magazine as well. The decline was largely due to the sharp drop in financial profits for the magazine in the late 1980s, causing the magazine to be published less frequently by 1986. Vegas Vacation appears to have been the breaking point for the once-beloved humor magazine.

Dorm Daze was released in a limited amount of theaters and did O.K. enough to get a Direct-to-DVD sequel in 2006. Then, for some reason, Dorm Daze 3 or Transylmania was actually released nationwide in 2009 and only grossed $397,000 dollars on a $10 million dollar budget and a $15 million dollar marketing budget. Another movie in the franchise hasn't been produced since.

Drama franchises

Sadly, the four-hour epic movie Gettysburg, based on a novel by Michael Shaara, had its franchise killed by the abominably executed sequel/prequel Gods and Generals, based on the novel written by Michael's son Jeff Shaara, which had promised a third entry, The Last Full Measure, also based on the Jeff Shaara book. The shocking thing about Gods and Generals is that there was a lot of very good material that wasn't used; in effect, the whole franchise was killed by bad editing.

Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, both Gods and Generals and Gettysburg were released on Blu-ray with new scenes added. Gettysburg just had a few small scenes added, whereas Gods and Generals got just about everything that was originally taken out of it put back in, greatly improving the film. Had this version been the one released in theaters, we'd have seen a film of The Last Full Measure by now.

Fantasy/Sci-fi franchises

Alien: Resurrection differs so much from the tone of its predecessors and eliminates so much of the series' mythology (like the USCM and Weyland-Yutani) that it managed to kill a franchise that even Alienł couldn't kill.

Conan the Destroyer was critically panned and didn't perform well at the box office, dropping many things of what made the original what it was, plus its Lighter and Softer tone turning away fans of the first movie while failing to attract younger audiences. Its flop put a possible third Conan movie into Development Hell, and the Red Sonja movie, where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays an obvious Captain Ersatz of Conan, discredited the whole idea of adapting Howard's works for more than 20 years (the only attempt, Kull the Conqueror, was a flop).

The Godzilla films made during the Turn of the Millennium had tepid box office performances, so Toho decided to make Godzilla Final Wars as a Grand Finale to the Millennium series while they put the franchise on temporary hiatus. Of course, even if they hadn't planned to shelf the King of the Monsters for the time being, they probably would've done so anyway after Final Wars ended up being the lowest-grossing of all the Millennium films. Toho eventually gave American company Legendary Pictures the rights for a 2014 reboot, then announced it will bring back Godzilla in 2016.

Jurassic Park III. A fourth film languished in Development Hell, but when Michael Crichtondied, producer Kathleen Kennedy initially decided against making more, and then, in a subversion, Steven Spielberg revealed at 2011's Comic-Con that a fourth film should be released within the next two to three years. There are hopes to build a new trilogy around Jurassic World, as it's being called, so we'll have to wait and see how that goes.

The Matrix Revolutions received so much criticism for being anticlimactic and not as action-packed as its predecessors that the Matrix craze quickly faded out. Then again, there may have been no particular plans to try to continue the franchise beyond that point.

RoboCop 3 was critically panned for its banal subject matter compared to the previous two installments and, when audiences took notice, flopped at the box office and single-handedly killed the RoboCop franchise for over twenty-one years. Between that time, attempts to continue the popularity of the franchise through a second animated television series, a comic book series, a live-action miniseries and a video game from Titus Software didn't really help matters.

A Continuity Reboot released in 2014 received lukewarm reviews and despite recouping its budget globally, it fell roughly $80 million behind a $130 million budget (with the $30 million of that budget spent on marketing costs, which added to the dismal results) domestically, possibly thanks to opening the week after The Lego Movie, which retained its number one spot at the box office while the RoboCop reboot grossed an abysmal $21.5 million on its first weekend. The franchise may yet again be withheld from cinema screens as a result of the disappointing performance domestic-wise.

Terminator Salvation not only apparently killed off the Terminator movie franchise (it was intended to be part one of a second trilogy), but also the company that made it. The rights went on sale, but no one was that interested and they ended up in the possession of...a hedge fund that had invested in the company. In 2011, it was reported that Annapurna Films (led by Megan Ellison, daughter of the Oracle founder) had bought the rights, and two years later the fifth movie, a reboot called Terminator Genisys (with Arnold returning to the series) was dated for 2015.

Horror franchises

After the surprise success of The Blair Witch Project, plans were made for a trilogy, but the second movie, Book of Shadows, killed those dreams.

Though there was another film after it, The Final Destination was the film that set the Final Destination series on the road to the point of no return.note Or, if you prefer, its final destination. It was the biggest hit in the franchise since the first, largely thanks to the addition of 3-D, but it was so poorly received by critics and fans alike that people stayed away in droves from Final Destination 5, leading to that film's failure driving the final nails into the series' coffin (despite generally being considereda much better movie).

New Line's subsequent Friday film, Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday in '93, finished what Jason Takes Manhattan started and put the series six feet under. It is regarded as the worst film in the series thanks to its Genre Shift, its lack of Jason (he only appears for about fifteen minutes in the beginning and end), and its complete jettisoning of the other films in the series past the second, and it took another nine years before another Friday film was released. That film, the guiltypleasureJason X in 2002, was made only to restore fans' interest in the series before the release of the long-awaited Freddy vs. Jason, which finally came out the following year after over a decade in Development Hell. However, while it was the biggest hit in either the Friday or Nightmare franchises and won the approval of fans of both series, plans for a sequel were restricted to the realm of comic books. A remake came out in 2009, and while it was a hit, it wasn't a big enough one to convince New Line not to sell the rights to the series back to Paramount.

The Halloween series experienced this up to four times depending on how you count it.

The failure of Zombie's follow-up Halloween II in 2009 likewise killed his reboot series. There are currently talks about another reboot, but nothing solid yet.

The Hannibal film series initially came to a close in 2001 with the release of the film adaptation of Red Dragon, rounding out what was, until then, a trilogy of film adaptations of Thomas Harris's trilogy of Hannibal books (Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal in chronological order) all helmed by Anthony Hopkins portraying the eponymous character, Hannibal Lector. Then Dino De Laurentiis announced he was producing a prequel/origin film, and told Harris that if he didn't write a book for the film to be based on, he would produce it anyway without Harris's involvement. Harris complied, and the results were the 2006 book Hannibal Rising and a 2007 film adaptation of it. The book received a mixed reaction, while the movie received a negative critical reception and (unlike the previous three films) was a box office disappointment, dissuading Harris from further continuing the Hannibal book series (and by extension the film franchise as well). The series as a whole was dead in the water until it got a Continuity Rebooton the small screen six years later, which lacks any input from Harris whatsoever and is an original prequel series to Red Dragon (though showrunnerBryan Fuller still plans to adapt the events of the original three books at some point in the show).

The Jaws franchise died with the flop Jaws: The Revenge, which has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 0%. This film, along with the other two sequels to Jaws, were made thanks to constant Executive Meddling, and consequently were made without the involvement of Steven Spielberg, the original film's director. Many fans of the original film also tend to disavow the existence of the sequels. The film also destroyed the shark movie genre as today's shark movies are not taken seriously.

With the exception of a few direct-to-video films, The Mummy franchise laid dormant through most of the 2000s. That changed in 2008 with the release of The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, an attempt at reviving the franchise with a new director and a mostly new cast. Although there were plans in place to continue the film series well beyond that movie, Dragon Emperor pretty much killed off any remaining interest that the public had in the franchise. A Darker and Edgier reboot has since been announced.

The A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise self-terminated with the combination of the fifth film, The Dream Child, in 1989 and Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare in 1991. The former film was poorly received by fans and was the lowest-grossing film in the franchise up to that point, causing New Line to pull the trigger with Freddy's Dead, a film that, despite making a bit more money, is today regarded as the series' rock bottom.

Saw VI was by no means a flop, earning $68.2 million against a $11.5 million budget, and was widely considered by critics and fans of the series to be a much better film than the previous two Saw movies released before it. However, it was by far the lowest-grossing film in the series, and when combined with the failure of other Torture Porn films at the box office and the blockbuster success of Paranormal Activity, the film that Saw VI competed with that October (and which couldn't have been more different in terms of tone), Lionsgate saw the writing on the wall and pulled the plug after the next installment. While Saw 3D: The Final Chapter was a hit, it wasn't enough to save the series.

Scream and Scream 2 each made just over $100 million at the domestic box office, while Scream 3 clocked in at just under $90 million. Scream 4 didn't even reach the $40 million mark (although it's far from universally loathed, and is the only film in the series to have done better outside North America). Having a gap between the third and fourth films longer than the period in which all three previous films were released may not have helped. (Of course, so did Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but that was the second most successful film of its year — unlike Sidney Prescott or Ghostface, Indy is a genuine icon.) While the studio still hasn't ruled out another sequel (though Scream creator Kevin Williamson says he's not interested), the chances of such films being made are slim, as the series is currently being rebooted by MTV as a television series.

Unlike their Super Sentai counterparts, the Power Rangers movie franchise died out with Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie. While there had been talks of trying to make movies during the Disney era, it would take 15 years for any sort of movie to appear with Power Rangers Samurai's "Clash of the Red Rangers" (and even that was just a TV special with a "movie event" label slapped onto it) and five more years after that for a proper theatrical film.

After the release of the derided movie Son of the Mask, Dark Horse Entertainment (the publisher of the original "The Mask" comics) did not make or release anything related to "The Mask" series until "Itty Bitty Mask"—a comic book that was released nine years after Son of The Mask.

The first Sin City film is an applauded action flick faithful to its source material, especially considering creator Frank Miller co-directed the film with Robert Rodriguez. The second movie, A Dame to Kill For, however, was criticized for its nine-year-long release gap between both films, outdated special effects, and garnered controversy for its teaser poster featuring a half-nude Eva Green portraying Ava Lord. Consequently, bad word-of-mouth resulted in audiences staying away and the film flopping instantly on its opening weekend. This turn of events may put the Sin City franchise on hold yet again, or perhaps result in a Continuity Reboot.

Barb Wire was savaged by critics and fans of the original comic and flopped at the box office, resulting in Dark Horse yanking the film license and refusing to allow any more Barb Wire movies.

Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin was so awful (lead actor George Clooney even said "I think we killed the franchise") that it convinced Warner to let the Batman fields lie fallow for a while, then let someone elsetake a crack at the series. Some Marvel Studios high-up is on record for saying that Batman & Robin was the most influential comic book movie, on account of it definitively showing to movie studios that they can't shovel out crap comic movies and expect the fans to like it. Schumacher continues to catch heat for his direction of the films and, barring accident or fortune, it will likely follow him to his grave—the punchline everyone thinks of when they remember his (otherwise excellent) career. It seems that, in the case of Batman Forever and B&R, Schumacher was likely just a hired hand — a technician who labored under the studio's close guidance. Basically, they wanted a more marketable Batman, and he became so cynical about the project that he announced each take with, "Okay everyone, remember: we're making a toy commercial" though a megaphone.

Green Lantern was supposed to launch the DC Comics equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and eventually lead to a Justice League film. The movie was panned by critics and had lukewarm box office results, which led to these plans being shuffled onto Man of Steel in the hopes that it would kick start their movie universethe right way with another Green Lantern movie set to be released on 2020. Ryan Reynolds had such a bad experience making the Green Lantern film that he's stated he has no interest in doing a Justice League movie unless he knows that it'll have a quality script and director.

The Blade series died off when Blade: Trinity underperformed and gained a poor reaction from critics and fans, leading to the film's star Wesley Snipes suing New Line Cinema (which distributed the films) and director David S. Goyer for cutting him out of the filmmaking process. Snipes also going to federal jail for tax evasion didn't help matters much, either, and pretty much ensured that the series will never continue. The film rights have since reverted back to Marvel.

Which was also not helped by a sudden glut of similarly themed Action Girl movies coming out at the same time as well, such as Ultraviolet and Ćon Flux, which were also lambasted by critics for being poor-to-mediocre in most aspects.

Fox did at one point have plans to completely reboot the Daredevil/Elektra franchise in the early 2010s, but ended up letting the film rights lapse back to Disney/Marvel in order to focus more on their Fantastic Four reboot. Marvel has since announced a made-for-Netflix show starring the character, but obviously independent of the earlier films and being part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

While the first Ghost Rider film did well on its initial release, it was viewed by the filmmakers (as well as by star Nicolas Cage) as being too corny to pass as a real Ghost Rider film. In the wake of films like The Dark Knight, the studio felt that people were finally willing to accept a more gritty take on the character, and green-lit Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. The film did poorly at the box office and received terrible reviews, with Cage later admitting that they'd dropped the ball a second time in regards to the film series. A year later Sony gave the film rights back to Disney/Marvel, who stated that they had no immediate plans to feature the character in their films.

Following the critical savaging and box office failure of Punisher: War Zone, Lions Gategave up on thePunisher film series and let the rights go back to Disney/Marvel as a direct result. Not much is known about the future of the character in film, but Marvel has hinted that he may be a major figure in their Daredevil reboot.

After Spider-Man 3, Sony cancelled the Spider-Man 4 film right before filming started, after a release date had been announced, in favor of a Continuity Reboot in the form of The Amazing Spider-Man. This is actually a subversion, though, as Spider-Man 3 (which got mixed reviews but made a huge profit) was not the cause of the Raimi Spider-Man franchise's death. The true culprit for the death of the franchise was Executive Meddling — director Sam Raimi walked out only because he felt he couldn't deliver the level of quality he wanted in the deadline he was given. Meanwhile, the rebooting was done because Sony didn't want the Spider-Man film rights to fall into Disney/Marvel's hands instead of, you know, acknowledging the murder of the golden egg-laying goose.

After the moderate success of the The Amazing Spider-Man film, Sony announced their plans to make a new Spider-Man film every two or so years as well as spin-off movies focusing on other characters that they had the rights to, as they clearly intended to hang on to the film rights for a very long time. The Amazing Spider-Man 2, however, received mixed reviews and failed to meet Sony's financial expectations in spite of making millions of dollars (some sources said that Sony was hoping for a billion dollar gross), and caused the third ASM film to be delayed by two years. Plans for a potential "soft reboot" were discussed with a new Spider-Man actor in a potential 2016 Sinister Six film (the Japanese Sony bosses were reportedly not happy with an interview Andrew Garfield gave in which he blamed the studio executives for messing up the second film), which would be supplemented by an all-female Spider-Man film as well as solo Venom and Aunt May origin films, and possibly an animated Spider-Man film. Rumors then claimed that Marvel offered to share the film rights with Sony so that Spidey could appear in Captain America: Civil War, in which he plays a major role. The negotiations broke down, but were started back up again after the massive Sony hack revealed that Sony was secretly unsure of how to proceed with the franchise. In February 2015, it was announced that Sony and Marvel had reached a deal to reboot Spider-Man in the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with an appearance in 2016's Captain America: Civil War and a solo film in 2017.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a brief Franchise Killer for the X-Men movies, since it was intended to take the franchise in a different direction following the original trilogy (as the title indicates, the plan was for a series of Origin Story movies for key characters of the franchise; X-Men Origins: Magneto would have been the next installment), but the terrible reaction to it killed these plans and a different (and much more successful) direction was chosen in the semi-reboot X-Men: First Class (which itself was partially an adaptation of the proposed Magneto-led movie). It also killed off a potential Deadpool film, until a 5-minute test reel with a CGI Deadpool (voiced by Ryan Reynolds) was leaked online in September 2014 to a very positive response, leading Fox to put the movie back in development for a planned February 2016 release.

Television series based films

The negative critical reception and underwhelming (but still relatively successful) box office intake for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (plus the deaths of both Charlie's voice-John Forsythe and replacement Bosley characters-Bernie Mac) means that the prospects for a third movie in the foreseeable future are unlikely. And with the TV series reboot burned at the stake by critics and canceled after four episodes were airednote possibly an instance of Screwed by the Network, as ABC had to know it wasn't going to get much of anything by dumping the show against The X Factor and The Big Bang Theory, it's not so much "Good morning, Angels" as "Goodbye, Angels."

Serenity, the feature-film continuation of the Firefly television series, drastically underperformed in the theaters, much like Firefly itself. Interestingly, Serenity was only green-lit due to the impressive sales of Firefly DVDs, and Serenity's failure killed the idea that DVD sales can be used to extrapolate a fanbase's ability to support a motion picture.

The negative reception and domestic box-office underperformance of Sex and the City 2 seems to have killed off that franchise, as Sarah Jessica Parker and Kim Cattrall seem decidedly less interested in making a third film than their costars.

Star Trek: Nemesis' plot contained a Sequel Hook, but its financial and critical failure ended any chance the Star Trek: The Next Generation crew had of getting another film. Then again, this section of the franchise may have been killed shortly before the release of this film because Brent Spiner (who played the android Data) refused to participate further because he was visibly aging and straining suspension of disbelief (though in an alternate future of the TV series' finale, Data had cosmetically altered himself to simulate aging anyway). You can't do TNG without Data, and Paramount's marketing department knew it, hence the tagline:

After the Twin Peaks TV series ended, the movie, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, was made, with the intention of leading into a trilogy of films and then maybe starting up the show again once David Lynch had consolidated his control, freeing the show from the Executive Meddling that had caused the cancellation in the first place. The movie was both a critical and financial flop, as audiences were caught off-guard by its Mind Screw nature and unexpectedly dark tone, and there has been no Twin Peaks since.

Another Jay Ward-inspired film would not be in the works until DreamWorks Animation acquired Classic Media (co-owner of Jay Ward's Bullwinkle Studios) and with it, the film license. The Mr. Peabody and Sherman film project was rebooted as a CGI film and released to 2014, which flopped domestically despite positive reviews, a strong advertising campaign and favorable foreign gross (this may have also been responsible for a CG Rocky and Bullwinkle short DWA had made to release with the movie getting shelved until the Blu-ray release). That didn't stop DreamWorks from ordering a proposed Mr. Peabody and Sherman TV series reboot, however.

The Live-Action Adaptation series based off The Flintstones started with the 1994 film, which became the sixth highest-grossing movie of the year despite negative reviews from critics, resulting in a sequel being ordered. However, Development Hell ensued, resulting in the sequel becoming a prequel instead and the main characters were re-cast after the original cast walked off production. The prequel, The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, which chronicles how Fred Flintstone met Wilma Flintstone, was released six years after the original film was released, but despite slightly more positive reception it flopped, resulting in no further Flintstones movies being made since then.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe came 6 years after the show ended and 10 years after the previous movie, and instead of resolving or even referencing the series' Myth Arc, it presented a Monster of the Week story involving a Pedophile Priest that fans and critics found to be in very poor taste. Its box-office failure ended plans for a third movie to answer any questions.

Other franchises

The Cat in the Hat killed off the live-action Dr. Seuss movie franchise that had started with How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, not so much because of its box-office receipts (which were not as bad as the scathing critical reviews, though still remarkably low) but because Theodore Geisel's widow was disgusted enough by it to deny any further live-action adaptations. Plans were laid out for a sequel but unfortunately never materialized as a direct result of the sanction from Mrs. Geisel. Later Dr. Seuss movies have been made purely with CGI.

The James Bond film series is the exception to the rule of a real franchise killer, as they have been continuously produced by the same family-owned production company for the same studio since 1962.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service was at the time of release viewed as a major disappointment as it continued a downward spiral in grosses that had begun with You Only Live Twice, despite the very different approaches taken with those two films. For the next film, Diamonds Are Forever, the studio was desperate and lured Sean Connery back for one last time in exchange for a hefty paycheck. However the film following Diamonds are Forever, Live and Let Die with Roger Moore as James Bond, proved that the series was still a very profitable commodity, despite a change in the lead role.

Licence to Kill, the 16th official movie (and the second and last one to star Timothy Dalton) seemed to do this for a while. With inflation in account, it's the lowest grossing film in the franchise. The marketing for the movie was subpar at best (it's to date, the last Bond movie to be released during summer). Add that to LTK itself, being one of the most polarizing Bond movies due to its decidedly Darker and Edgier, Miami Vice-influenced plot (especially considering the Lighter and Softer Roger Moore era was still fresh in the general public's mind). LTK felt like an end of an era (dating back to the Sean Connery era) as it was the last Bond movie to have any involvement from director John Glen, screenwriter Richard Maibaum, title designer Maurice Binder, cinematographer Alec Mills, and producer Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli (plus the last Bond movie to take place during the Cold War). There wouldn't be a new Bond movie released for six years (the longest such delay in franchise history) mostly due to litigation from 1990-1993 between the co-owners on the sale of television licensing rights. In the meantime, Dalton's contract expired, Pierce Brosnan was hired, and the 17th movie started being Saved from Development Hell.

While Die Another Day by no means flopped (it was the highest grossing Bond film at the time), it was deemed ridiculous by many, and received at best mixed reviews. More importantly, however, was that with this film and the preceding The World Is Not Enough, the box-office grosses simply did not match the increasing production budgets and marketing costs, and made very little profit for franchise co-owners Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Broccoli/Wilson's Danjaq. For MGM, their co-ownership in the James Bond franchise is their single-most important IP asset, and for a studio with an otherwise weak output, Bond must provide large profits for the studio to survive. Soon after, Brosnan was dismissed and the franchise went into hibernation before rebooting with a back-to-basics movie starring Daniel Craig as Bond. Word of God mentions that the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks also played a part, because the writers felt they couldn't justify the franchise's campiness after such a traumatic event.

The Next Karate Kid was poorly received by fans and critics, and made less money at the box office than The Karate Kid III, putting the series on ice until the release of a Continuity Reboot in 2010 starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith.

The box office failure of Kit Kittridge: An American Girl killed any future theatrical adaptations of the American Girls dolls. The series has had some mild success as Straight-To-DVD features, however.

The Legend of The Lone Ranger ended any chance of further Lone Ranger adaptations for the next two and a half decades with ITC's behavior, especially toward the classic Lone Ranger, Clayton Moore (such behavior would become ITC's undoing, as following the well-deserved and spectacular failure of the film it only survived while Sir Lew Grade was still alive). In 2013, a feature film rebooting the franchise failed with both critics and the box office.

Mary Poppins was adapted by the Disney company into film in 1964. As soon as the book Author P. L. Travers saw the screening of Mary Poppins, she was upset with the Disney adaptation despite the critical acclaim and awards the film received. She decided that Walt Disney and his team would no longer make anymore sequels based on Mary Poppins. P. L. Travers decided to have Mary Poppins on Broadway without any American film producers or the Sherman Brothers involved.

The Rocky series died initially with Rocky V, which underperformed the other films and was scathed by critics and audiences. Sylvester Stallone himself disowned the film, expressing disgust toward United Artists rejecting the original script that called for Rocky's death. United Artists then decided to scrap plans for a sixth film and left the series dormant until Rocky Balboa in 2006, which ignoredRocky V. Despite the positive critical and box office reception of that film, Stallone decided not to continue the franchise, and instead went on to make Rambo IV and The Expendables.

While it is a Cult Classic among some fans and gamers, the critical and financial meltdown of the Live-Action Adaptation of Super Mario Bros. convinced Nintendo that the film business wasn't fruitful for them, and refused to grant the film rights to any of their franchises for the next few decadesnote outside of the Pokémon movies, but only because those are directly based off the anime, which itself is based off the video game franchise.

Leaked emails stolen as part of a cyber attack against Sony Pictures have suggested that Nintendo might be reconsidering their anti-film policy. According to the emails, the company has been in negotiations with Sonynote Who, ironically, is amajorcompetitorto Nintendo in the video game console business to grant the latter the movie rights to Mario that would allow the studio to produce an Animated Adaptation that would serve as a complete Continuity Reboot to the film series. This leak came just six months after Sony announced a CGI/live action hybrid film adaptation of Sonic the Hedgehog, which just adds to the irony.

Anthony Horowitz had high hopes for a potential film franchise based off his Alex Rider series. Unfortunately, the first film, Stormbreaker (based off the first book of the series, of the same name), divided fans and critics and bombed at the box office. Horowitz revoked the film license from The Weinstein Company after its failure, thus his dream of a film franchise was never realized.

Live-Action TV

Doctor Who was technically canceled three times: First, a break during the summer of '85 while the network deliberated over bringing it back; a six-month 'hiatus' while fans badgered the BBC to restore the series to air; and finally a 16-year cooldown period before the 2005 revival. For this reason, it's debatable which serial is the one that put Who out of business for good. "Attack of the Cybermen" is a strong candidate, being that it's the embodiment of everything the show's critics hated. The "Trial of a Timelord" arc, conceived as a last saving throw for Doctor Who, impressed no one and ended in the hiatus; the trial was comprised of four hastily-written, convoluted serials, the most baffling of which would have to be "Mindwarp". This series managed to stagger on for an additional three seasons, and through it was beginning to win critics back over, the BBC decided Doctor Who wasn't worth the bother. An American reboot was attempted in 1996, which resulted in the maligned Doctor WhoTV Movie.

A major problem for Classic Who was its large audience: Many were impressionable children, but others were simply grown-up fans who expected a level of maturity from the show. These two factions did not get on with each other: A cabal of Moral Guardians attacked the Tom Baker era, with its Hammer Horror tropes for being too scary for kids (famously derided as "teatime brutality for tots" by Mary Whitehouse); in a bid to curry favor with them, the show's producers dialed down the horror in favor of light comedy. The politics was the next to be thrown overboard, as the UK under Margaret Thatcher was no place for the peace-loving, anarchic tone of the Classic Series. The series became bloodier and very, very eighties, with head writer Eric Saward spending more time fleshing out his amoral, Clint Eastwood-style bad guys than the show's stars. Finally, in a last bid to win back the alienated fans, producer John Nathan-Turner overloaded the show with continuity nods and call backs, often forgetting the context of where the references came from. It wasn't until much later that Doctor Who considered writing serials based on the turmoil backstage: "Vengeance on Varos", itself a parody of sensationalist TV, and "The Happiness Patrol", set in a Mary Whitehouse-themed dystopianote albeit one ruled by a pastiche of Margaret Thatcher, Word of God says, where being unhappy is a crime, and where stormtroopers forcibly paint the TARDIS bright pink so as not to look 'depressing.'

Major League Baseball's Saturday afternoon Game of the Week went on a two year hiatus (1994-95) after CBS, who took over from long runner, NBC in 1990 lost half a billion dollars off of their contract. During the CBS period (1990-93), they didn't air a Saturday afternoon game for all 26 weeks of the regular season (instead covering about 18 on an inconsistent or sporadic basis). In weeks that they didn't cover a baseball game, they would air other sports programming like golf. Even when FOX received an MLB package beginning in 1996 (following the failure of a joint venture between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC called The Baseball Network), they didn't start their baseball coverage until Memorial Day weekend. It wasn't until 2007 (18 years after NBC aired their final GOTW), that the Game of the Week was once again broadcast for each week of the regular season.

Heroes Volumes 3 and 4 (both making up season 3) qualify as such. The second season was a major letdown compared to the strong premier season, but people forgave it because half the season had been derailed by the 2008 WGA strike and The Powers That Be did the best they could. When season three came along, they expected a return to form; what they got was a Random Events Plot with characters acting wildly Out of Character as the writers seemed to be changing their minds on key plot points three times per episode. Best known is Sylar's Heel-Face Revolving Door, but it was like that with everything. By the end of that season, most of the fans had given up on it. There was a fourth season (Volume 5), and while it still had problems many of the remaining fans felt it to be something of a return to form, but by that point few people cared about the show anymore. Not only was the TV series cancelled at the end of that season, but the graphic novels were also scrapped as well, and the writers and producers can't even get a greenlight for a miniseries to give Heroes a proper last hurrah. NBC plans on rebooting it with Heroes Reborn, set in the same universe, but with a new cast of characters.

The weak reviews and bad ratings of Law & Order: Los Angeles (despite NBC's Wolverine Publicity of the show) served to kill off that franchise in the US. However, the UK remake of the series is doing well and has been picked up for a seventh series. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit continues to carry the torch in the US, as well, but its continued existence seems to be almost entirely a function of ratings impotence from the rest of the network.

1990-91: The year was flooded with mediocre game shows, many of which were one-season revivals. With original Deal host Monty Hall in semi-retirement (although he stayed on as executive producer), the 1990 Deal revival was hosted by Bob Hilton, who was far more experienced as an announcer than a host, and considered a poor fit. Due to falling ratings, Hall stepped out of retirement and hosted the rest of the season with intentions to scout out a new host for Season 2, but the show was canceled instead.

1996: An "edgier" remake called Big Deal (hosted by Mark DeCarlo) lasted a whopping six episodes on FOX in 1996 (although it was slated to be Un-Cancelled in March 1997). Went down quickly due to phony attempts at being "hip" and "modern".

1998: A pilot hosted by Gordon Elliott was proposed but also fell through.

2003: Hosted by Billy Bush for NBC, and canned after three episodes for many of the same reasons as Big Deal.

2009-: With Wayne Brady as host, Let's Make a Deal has finally started thriving again on CBS daytime. Between 1993 and this version's debut, daytime television had no game shows at all other than The Price Is Right (also a CBS property).

By 2008, Little Britain was already suffering badly from Seasonal Rot and the Ricky Gervais-led backlash against classic Brit Coms and sketch shows. However, the Little Britain USA series proved to be the final nail in the coffin, getting awful viewing figures and critical reactions on both sides of the Atlantic, and being heavily criticized for worn-out characters and situations, the new characters being even less funny than the existing ones had become, and over-use of the Laugh Track.

The downfall of NBC's Thursday night "Must See TV" block, can be attributed to the combination of oversaturation of sitcoms all across NBC's line-up (to put things into proper perspective, during the 1997-98 season, NBC had about 18 sitcom slots on Mondays-Thursdays and Sunday), which for the most part seemed nearly identical from one another (i.e. multi-camera shows about young, affluent white people living in New York City), the mismanagement of Jeff Zucker (which on its own, can be considered a Dork Age of NBC), who because of his "super-sizing" concept for Friends, made it much harder to nurture another show right after it, the lack of strong shows to replace staples like Seinfeld, Frasier and Friends (which in the meantime, were usually sandwiched in-between otherwise mediocre or forgettable shows like The Single Guy, Suddenly Susan, Caroline In The City and Veronica's Closet) such as the disastrous American adaptation of Coupling, other networks' (i.e. CBS and ABC) Thursday night line-ups becoming increasingly stronger by around 2004, and The Apprentice moving into the 9 p.m. timeslot.

With the 1987 premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek was once again a TV staple, and thanks to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager, the franchise was still healthy in 2001. Then came Star Trek: Enterprise. Plagued with Executive Meddling, a title ambiguous to the general public, a horrible theme song, and two rather weak seasons, the third and fourth seasons, though improved, couldn't keep the show on the air, and it was cancelled in 2005, meaning there was no new Star Trek television for fans to anticipate for the first time in 18 years. A controversial, but lucrative reboot film by JJ Abrams seems to have resurrected the franchise.

The much hated (by both the fans and the cast) final episode "These Are the Voyages", was purely adding insult to injury. The relaunch novel series couldn't retcon it fast enough. Note that this is the only episode in the history of Star Trek (counting the animated series, that's 725 episodes) that's ever been directly and intentionally contradicted by a novel.

Fantasy Leader, a Blogspot user, wrote a detailed essay on what was almost the Franchise Killer for Super Sentaihere. To recap: the coincidental collision of a gradual Broken Base in the fandom that built up starting with Chikyuu Sentai Fiveman five years ago and a pair of Genre Killingreal-life incidents outside of the fandomnote (The Great Hanshin Earthquake which occurred a few months before the series debuted, and the sarin gas attacks in the Tokyo subway which occurred shortly after Ohranger's premiere, made the 1995 season's Darker and Edgier alien robot invasion plot very untenable) led to show ratings falling to a new low in Chouriki Sentai Ohranger and Toei was prepared to pull the plug... until they noticed that Ohranger toy sales somehow reached a monstrous new high for Sentai overall.

Years later, Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters did so poorly sales- and ratings-wise that it's rumored that Bandai actually approached Toei and Saban Brands and asked them to skip it in favor of Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger, leading to the creation of Power Rangers Dino Charge.note It was later revealed that this was only part of the reason. The other reason was Saban knew that kids would be more enticed with dinosaurs than spies. Not only that, but the annual crossover essentially derailed it from being a crossover between Go-Busters and Kyoryuger to basically "hey, let's get the two other Dinosaur Sentai together!", with the Go-Busters getting little-to-no additional closure. This is additionally telling with that crossover's post-credits scene where an upgraded version of Go-Busters' Big Bad shows up, completely late for the movie and ends up getting defeated by the passing-by Sentai cameo.

In the West, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive was the defining factor in Disney's grinding the franchise to a halt and selling it back to Saban in 2010.note Their buyout of Marvel in 2009, filling the same superhero/boys-oriented action niche as Power Rangers but on a far grander and more reliable scale, was assuredly another factor in the sell. It is also ironic when one considers the earlyhistory of Super Sentai and thus Power Rangers. The only reason Power Rangers Jungle Fury and Power Rangers RPM were made was because Jetix Europe and Bandai respectively asked them to for each series.

The combination of aging sitcoms like Family Matters and Step by Step moving to CBS (who started (and ended) their own family-friendly Friday night sitcom line-up in 1997-98 called "The Block Party"), the oversaturation of supernatural/magic type shows (Sabrina the Teenage Witch and new series You Wish and Teen Angel, which both lasted only one season), the failure of Two of a Kind (which was the last sitcom produced by the previously reliable Miller-Boyett group) starring the Olsen twins the following year, and ultimately the ending of Boy Meets World after seven seasons and Sabrina... moving to The WB after the 1999-2000 season, killed off ABC's TGIF block (although ABC would bring back the TGIF brand for the 2003-05 seasons).

Music

The violence at Altamont killed not only Meredith Hunter but the whole idea of the "peace, love and music" late-'60s outdoor rock festival that Monterey had pioneered and Woodstock made legendary.

Similarly, after the violent and criminal tragedies of Woodstock '99, the owners of the Woodstock name have gone on record to say it will never be used again.

The death blow to The Love Parade was delivered by the stampede at the 2010 event, where bad design of the location led to the death of 21 people.

007 Legends' poor sales and critical reception has, at least for now, put an end to James Bond video games, since after the game's failure Activision dropped the Bond license and so far no one else has picked it up.

The Guitar Hero franchise came to a halt after Warriors of Rock lost out to Rock Band 3. It didn't help that fans had gone through exposure fatigue with the release of several different attempts at spinoffs in the previous two years (Band Hero, DJ Hero) within several months of each other. Activision, for their part, have recognised that they spent so much time and creative energy on DJ Hero that they forgot that GH might have needed some love too (four spinoffs != love).

As for the Rock Band series, it was likely the tepid performance of Green Day Rock Band (released a few months before 3) that confirmed suspicions that interest in the genre was waning, and prompted Viacom to start the process of dropping Harmonix (and with it, the MTV Games brand). Without Viacom's backing, Harmonix's ability to get licenses for popular music started to dwindle, and a year or so after the spin-off (but DLC-compatible) game Rock Band Blitz, DLC releases reached their end.

Prototype 2 fell victim to overly-optimistic sales expectations. A heavy marketing push couldn't help the game reach its expected goal of 4 million units, or even the 2+ million moved by the first Prototype, spelling the end for both the series and its creator, Radical Entertainment.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback doesn't fit with the canon of the first two games, and it doesn't help that it ends with a cliffhanger that will likely never be resolved. This isn't surprising, since it was made by a completely different developer and released as a budget game.

Atari just about killed not just a movie-based franchise, but an entire medium with their hideous overreaching on E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. The game was a poorly-designed, hard-to-understand, Christmas Rushed mess. Atari foolishly printed more cartridges than there were consoles, and overcharged for the privilege. The whole thing led to The Great Video Game Crash of 1983 and probably ensured the movie itself never got sequels or additional tie-in merch. It may also have been a contributory factor in the movie not getting released on videocassette until 1988.

After Atari's buy-out on Humongous Entertainment, the company tried to continue the Backyard Sports, Putt-Putt and Pajama Sam series. Putt-Putt's last game wasn't all too bad — it had some poor voice acting, had way too much recycled content, and was boring; but it's at least playable compared to their attempt at Pajama Sam, which had a very cringe-worthy choice of voice actor, a lame plot, Loads and Loads of Loading, and several other things. They didn't sell or score well enough to continue onward. As for the Backyard Sports series, it continued to get an even worse treatment before it also saw its coffin sealed shut—no games for it have been announced since they lost the last leg the series was standing on (the major sports licenses) and saw their two attempts to Win Back the Crowd (Sandlot Sluggers and Rookie Rush) fail miserably.

Godzilla: Unleashed, made in 2007, had such poor reviews and sales (especially considering it was released to the massive install bases of the PlayStation 2 and the Wii) that there weren't any more Godzilla games until 2014, when Namco and Toho worked together to produce ''[[Video Game/Godzilla The Game]].

Master of Orion and Master Of Orion 2 were classics in the turn-based strategy genre. A toxic combination of Executive Meddling, Sequelphobic developers, and some other bad decisions resulted in a Master Of Orion 3 that bore a striking resemblance to doing one's taxes and was about as much fun. The game bombed hard on release, and since then there has been little hope that the series will be revived. Brad Wardell of Stardock expressed interest in making a fourth game in 2008, but his comments were mere speculation and there has been no follow-up.

Due to poor sales and, more specifically, Executive Meddling, the Darkstalkers series hasn't seen a new release since 1998. Yoshinori Ono (Street Fighter IV producer) has been working vigorously towards a new installment, but it's unlikely to get any sort of release due to low sales of Darkstalkers Resurrection (a downloadable re-release of the second and third games released March 2013).

Fans of Mega Man point to the departure of Keiji Inafune (the series' chief game designer) from Capcom and the subsequent controversy surrounding Mega Man Legends 3's cancellation as the points where the once-strong video game franchise had finally lost its way. Attempts by other developers to branch the series out in other directions never made it out of the production phases, and Capcom's own attempts to move the Blue Bomber onto mobile devices with a sloppy port of Mega Man X and the just-plain-sloppy Rockman Xover were met with harsh disdain. Some of its sub-series have had earlier brushes with death, as well:

Mega Man 8, due to various factors (including widely reviled voice acting and some poorly devised weapons and items), resulted in the Classic part of the franchise being left fallow for twelve years. And while the eighth game is still in continuity (deliberate references to it were made in both Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10), the gameplay and design aesthetic reverted back to that of the second installment, widely considered the Magnum Opus of the Classic series.

Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor seems to be the death knell for what was otherwise a highly immersive and otherwise decent Humongous Mecha franchise. While most of the reviews praise the concept behind Heavy Armor, such as its story and the desired gameplay effect, almost everyone takes umbrage with the execution, which is to say the mandatory Kinect interface and its inability to accurately translate player motions into in-game actions. Between scathing reviews and sales figures below even those of the original Steel Battalion (which was a break-even affair in the first place), Capcom has made no mention of sequels to redeem the title or even a patch to smooth out the control issues.

The Command & Conquer franchise got killed off after the release of its fourth game of the main series, and that was only a few years after solid hits by the third games of both the main series and the Red Alert spin-off series. With EA having so many other Cash Cow Franchises at the time, Tiberian Twilight came and tanked, there's little possibility they would give the franchise another chance now. EA later announced that it planned on developing a multiplayer only online-focused free-to-play sequel to Generals, but it has also been cancelled.

Following a decently-received revival of the Medal of Honor franchise in 2010, Medal of Honor: Warfighter was panned for its uninspired storytelling and a mess of bugs, even after a ridiculously large day-one patch. The game was also so hated it became a walking punchline for "Bad Modern Military Shooters". The series has since been taken "out of rotation"note A new MOH game was meant to be released every other year, with Battlefield filling in the gaps between releases. after failing to live up to EA's expectations, and developer Danger Close was closed as a result, which was then occupied by Battlefield creator DICE, making it DICE Los Angeles.

EA Sports' NBA Live series was to be renamed NBA Elite for the 2011 year. However, the game's demo was so awful that they yanked it and cancelled the game weeks from release. It didn't help that their primary competitor, Take Two's NBA 2K11, is widely considered one of the best sports games of all time. The same thing happened with the next two years' NBA Live games, forcing EA to concede the basketball sim market to 2K Sports. NBA Live 14, the first game in the series since the hiatus, got a harsh negative reception. Live 15, while still far behind NBA 2K15 in terms of critical praise, is seen as a step back in the right direction.

Though Ultima IX: Ascension was already planned to bring the third trilogy of games to a close, it resulted in a horribly Broken Base. Development nevertheless started on Ultima X, which was never finished.

The Wing Commander series was one of the definitive video game experiences of The Nineties. Constantly improving gameplay coupled with drastic leaps and bounds in production values, culminating in Wing Commander IV, which combined then-high-resolution interlaced video cutscenes shot on film on real (and well-done) sets, with fullscreen 800x600 gameplay. Privateer 2 The Darkening, an In Name Only sequel to 1993's dark-horse Wing Commander Privateer, had buggy gameplay and a dearth of decent ship designs, but at least had a gripping storyline and excellent performances by some well-established actors (Clive Owen was the protagonist, with David Warner making his first of two appearances in the series). 1997's Wing Commander Prophecy was a blow to the series' fortunes but not a fatal one; the new Vision engine, while buggy, made as effective use of then-new 3D acceleration technology (the forerunner of modern graphics cards) as the original had made of the then-cutting-edge Sound Blaster sound card technology. 1998's Wing Commander Secret Ops, an Expansion Pack Sequel to Prophecy, was quite popular, being an early Episodic Game released for free over the Internet, and largely revitalized the franchise for the promised sequel, Wing Commander Strike Team, to follow. The Movie was a money-losing nightmare, with awful sets, pathetic fighters built from chopped-down nose sections of actual Cold War-era English Electric Lightning fighters, and uninspired performances from actors who really ought to have known better (including David Warner's second of two appearances in the franchise, giving what could generously be called a subdued turn as Admiral Tolwyn). It made back just over one-third of its $30 million budget (half of that coming on opening weekend and largely due to being the exclusive venue for opening-day weekend for the trailer for Star Wars Episode I). The only appearance of the franchise after this point has been a weak arena shooter for Xbox Live.

Fatal Frame III's abysmal sales killed the franchise outside of its native Japan, where a fourth game was releasednote but never left Japan due to game breaking bugs that neither Nintendo or Tecmo wanted to take responsibility for (and Nintendo not wanting to bring over a very imperfect game), as well as a remake of the second game on the Wii (the only non-Japanese regions to receive the remake were Europe and Australia, as the lack of an American release might be because Nintendo of America considers the Wii dead and would rather focus all their attention on the Wii U). Its spin-off title, Spirit Camera, was released outside of Japan but received poor reviews and may endanger the future of the series.

Rygar: The Legendary Adventure was a good game, but didn't perform well enough to continue the series. It was less-than-spectacularly ported to the Wii several years hereafter, sealing the fate of the franchise. At one point, there was a Rygar 2 announced, but it ended up being vaporware.

Five years elapsed between Win Back and its sequel, which in the end turned out completely awful and flopped.

Dance Dance Revolution X basically killed the franchise outside of East Asia, not because of the game itself, but because of the Bad Export for You fiasco surrounding the arcade hardware. In East Asia, Konami offered upgrade kits for old machines as well as brand-new redesigned cabinets with HD monitors. But in North America and Europe, Konami contracted things to Raw Thrills and Betson, who didn't offer upgrades and only sold a cheap knock-off of the redesigned HD cabinets. The RT/Betson cabinets were inferior in quality to the Japanese ones and broke as easily as peanut brittle, yet they were still thousands of dollars more expensive than upgrading an old cabinet would've been. This led to lots of arcades buying a new machine only to find out it was crap. Making this worse is that a dedicated In The Groove 2 cabinet had been introduced to North American arcades some years prior, which was no longer on the market, but increased players' expectations for quality. Konami would later dump Betson and announced another redesign to be less rubbish and more similar to the Japanese cabinets, but the damage was already done. To this day, there are still old, broken-down RT/Betson DDR X cabinets scattered around North American arcades. And since Konami doesn't produce consumer DDR titles anymore, and DDR games from DanceDanceRevolution (2013) onwards have always-online DRM as part of Konami's eAMUSEMENT Participation subscription service, the only way to play current DDR versions legally is to travel to Japan or other select Asian countries.

The arcade version of Gradius III did not perform as well in Japanese arcades as its predecessors due to a Sequel Difficulty Spike that drove away most of the players except for the truly hardcore. As a result, the only home conversion of the game for many years was a reformulated port for the SNES that toned the difficulty to a fair extent. It would be another ten years before Konami decided to produce a fourth Gradius game for the arcades.

Rumble Roses suffered from a Broken Base before it was even released, with both Anime and Professional Wrestling fans interested in the game. During development it became obvious the game was designed to cater to anime fans, but it was a decent enough wrestling game that the pro wrestling camp wasn't fully alienated. Then came the sequel, Rumble Roses XX, with a labyrinthine and ludicrously time-consuming unlocking system, a completely pathetic create-a-wrestler feature, and a boring street fighting mode that no one liked. The killer, though, was the "Queens Match Mode", done in a style of Japanese erotica that, through Values Dissonance, came across as extremely creepy Fan Disservice elsewhere, evaporating most of its international fanbase. To make matters worse, RRXX was released on a different platform (Xbox 360) than the original game (PlayStation 2), killing much of its built-in audience. Plans were to eventually port but higher-ups claimed there simply was not enough interest in the series to make a PlayStation 3 version viable.

With the surprise success of Zombies Ate My Neighbors, LucasArts decided to take a similar property in development and rework it into a sequel. Ghoul Patrol was a bomb, with tedious, confusing gameplay and none of the original's fun spirit. At least there's still the Wii Virtual Console release of the original game.

Blacksite: Area 51 is an interesting chicken-or-the-egg case. While the game was so atrociously bad that it ensured no future Area 51 games would be made, the game's Obvious Beta glitches and other over signs of poor quality were an indication that Midway Games was already on the brink of collapse. Sure enough, the entire company folded soon after the game's release. To paraphrase Word of God: "This project was so fucked up. I just wasn't excited about this Area 51 game."

After the third and final arcade Cruis'n game Exotica was ported to the Nintendo 64 in 2000, the Cruis'n series didn't really have any future as a viable series after the fifth-generation era (with the average GBA game Velocity being the only game released since). But that didn't stop Midway from taking their port of the 2004 arcade videogame adaptation of The Fast and the Furious they had at the time, removing all traces of the film in the game, and releasing it simply asCruis'n in 2007 (this was done because they lost the film license during the development of the arcade game, which to their credit had similar to the Cruis'n games in terms of gameplay). What could had been a possible comeback attempt for the series was killed by Cruis'n 07's poor sales and critical drubbing for its dated gameplay and graphics (with many people describing them from being ripped straight out of the Nintendo 64 era), terrible audio, long loading times, and barebones content and depth.

Gauntlet was a fairly decent hack-and-slash arcade-style adventure series, until Seven Sorrows came along. Developed by Midway's San Diego studio after the former Atari Games had been closed down, it was an Obvious Beta, with a lot of old standby techniques gone (like not being able to shoot potions), and none of the "new features" touted for the game anywhere. Any plans for the franchise after that were effectively shelved. Warner Bros. rebooted the series on PC a decade after the release of Seven Sorrows, and while it scored better than their Spy Hunter reboot (see below), player and critical reaction was mixed.

Baten Kaitos: Origins came out near the end of the GameCube's lifespan, four months before the Wii launch. Despite improving massively on the flaws of Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, it was overlooked by a gaming community clamoring for next-gen consoles and never sold particularly well. With the rumored Nintendo DS installment canceled, the future of the series looks bleak.

The 2009 Wii remake of Klonoa: Door to Phantomile bombed so badly in sales, that it not only killed any possibility of the proposed Klonoa 2 remake getting greenlit, but probably put the entire game series on ice, as no new Klonoa games have been announced or released since. It did live on as a webcomic on Shifty Look for a bit, but then Shifty Look closed down, sealing the coffin on the series completely.

Although Xenosaga was meant to be a six-part series, it ended after three games. None of the games individually were primarily responsible for the premature end, but altogether the games didn't perform as well as expected. Episode II performed so poorly that part of Episode III's selling point was that it (debatably) coherently summarized Episode II, removing the need to play it to understand the story. Players were thankful, but after the blow Episode II had dealt the franchise, almost every industry commentator observed that Episode III would have to be perfect in every way to keep the series afloat.

F-Zero: GP Legend was this for the F-Zero series. In addition to performing poorly sales-wise, it didn't help either that poor word-of-mouth effectively sunk the accompanying Animated Adaptation before it even hit North American airwaves. While there was only one other sequel to GP Legend (2004's F-Zero Climax), it was never released outside of Japan due to GP Legend's overall poor reception in North America. This was all also combined with Shigeru Miyamoto admitting to having Writer's Block in terms of bringing new ideas to the series.

The poorly-received Metroid: Other M put the Metroid series on ice for a second time (counting the long hiatus between 1994 and 2002 after Super Metroid). Despite good initial sales, poor word-of-mouth took its toll and new copies were rapidly marked down to bargain price. And Yoshio Sakamoto, the franchise co-creator who was heavily involved with Other M, said at the time that he didn't plan to return to Metroid or any of his other traditional video game creations any time soon. Only four years later, at E3 2014, Nintendo confirmed that new installments for both 2D and 3D-style Metroid games entered the planning stages.

Planet Puzzle League was a perfectly good game on its own, but received extremely negative consumer reception in Japan for almost completely ditching the kawaisa aspect it had previously sold itself on. Other than a few Virtual Console rereleases of the original Panel de Pon, there hasn't been a new game in the series since.

Alex Kidd and the Enchanted Castle flopped so badly that Sega ditched the titular character as their mascot, and replaced him with Sonic the Hedgehog. While Alex probably didn't have much of a future as Sega's mascot anyway, since the company wanted a more "hip" audience for the Genesis, his series would probably have survived if Enchanted Castle had been better received. Instead, he appeared in the Dolled-Up InstallmentAlex Kidd in Shinobi World and has not had a new game of his own since, though he has appeared as an unlockable character in Sega Superstars Tennis, as well as Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing and its sequel, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed.

Golden Axe: Beast Rider was a failed attempt to translate the gameplay of the classic side-scrolling beat-em-up series to 3D, and did enough lasting damage to put an end to any further games in the franchise.

Sakura Wars is seemingly dead, due to the result of weak sales of the fifth title and its tie-in merchandise and anime. The weak sales of the fifth game in the US in 2010 have also apparently destroyed any hope of seeing the first four games released in America (though there was an attempt to localize the rest of the games in the series for digital distribution that sprang up on Facebook in 2012).

Shenmue was a Franchise Killer after the first episode in the US owing both to the end of the Sega Dreamcast and slow gameplay, but the second episode (of a proposed four) was released on Dreamcast to the rest of the world, and was exclusive to Xbox in America. Unfortunately, the second episode managed to fail financially on both the Dreamcast and the Xbox, rendering its huge and startling cliffhanger the end. As the mastermind behind the series, Yu Suzuki, has left Sega, there is little hope of revival.

Shenmue was also something of a Sunk Cost Fallacy that killed off the old Sega. Depending on who you believe, at the time, the Shenmue project cost anywhere from from $47 million to $70 million to create. That's a sizeable chunk of change, and the latter figure would have been an industry record. During this time, Sega's finances were none too good and the Dreamcast ultimately underperformed. The game most likely didn't profit, and it's probably fair to suspect it depleted money from the company at a time where they couldn't afford to. Sega did survive to go third-party after the DC went bust, but didn't last much longer before being bought by Sammy Corp. and "retooled". It hasn't been quite the same since.

It has also been estimated that the game was so expensive, and the install base so small, every Dreamcast owner would have to have bought at least two copies just to break even.

Sega's Shinobi franchise was killed quite dead by the poor Shinobi Legions installment in 1995, not returning until a reboot in 2002. It died again in 2004 with Nightshade (Kunoichi), which itself was a perfectly good game, but had little to no marketing and its link to the Shinobi franchise was not played up, so it sat in obscurity. A later installment for the Nintendo 3DS game received decent reviews, but failed to sell well enough to properly re-vitalize the series, compounded by developer Griptonite Games' acquisition and closure shortly after the game's release.

There were only two games in the spinoff Storybook Series, as Sonic and the Black Knight failed to impress.

After years of dormancy, the original "classic" branch of Sonic The Hedgehog games that kickstarted the franchise on the Sega Genesis was given a new installment through the downloadable Sonic the Hedgehog 4 series, beginning with Episode I. Despite largely splitting the fansfor the changes it made from the original games, it received relatively positive reviews from critics and sold well enough to get a second episode greenlit. Episode II wasn't as lucky, as it released to critical and commercial indifference and resulted in the planned third episode being cancelled. Given that the PR managers stated that a fourth Sonic 4 episode and fifth classic Sonic game were possible if Sonic the Hedgehog 4 series continued to sell well, Sonic 4: Episode II's failure also shut down plans for more classic Sonic games as well (though given the polarizing reception to Sonic 4 as a whole, it's not very likely more classic Sonic games were plausible after Sonic 4 ended.).

After Sonic Rush Adventure underperformed in sales, all handheld Sonic games since then have been handheld counterparts of Sonic Team's console games, rather than their ownindividualseries, something the franchise hadn't completely done since the Game Gear port of Sonic Spinball.

The Sonic Riders line of racing spinoff games was killed off by the Xbox 360/Kinect-exclusive third game Free Riders (though it's possible that with the advent of the Sega All-Stars line of racing games, Sega likely had no plans to continue past the third game anyway). The game was roundly ripped apart by reviewers and fans alike for its atrocious control scheme that demanded the movement of the player's entire body for input, was terribly designed, and was the only method provided for playing and navigating through the game (compared to the previous two games, which used traditional controllers and used or offered traditional control schemes).

The Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Gamescrossover party game series might have been put on ice by the fourth installment Sochi 2014 Winter Games, which (in contrast to previous installments) received a tepid reception from reviewers and flopped in sales.

While the Sonic Boom cartoon has performed well, its tie-in games Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystalnote both of which along with the TV series were made solely by Executive Meddling, as they had no involvement from Sonic the Hedgehog's studio Sonic Team bombed with both critics and fans and seems to have killed any chance of another Sonic Boom game happening. It doesn't help that Rise of Lyric may have also killed the studio that made it in the process.

Virtual On MARZ killed its series. The game was changed from a 3D Fighting Game to an arena-based Beat 'em Up (of sorts, Virtual On has guns), it became single-player, had a horrible, generic anime-like plot, and the English version was plagued by "Blind Idiot" Translation. Ironically enough, most of the cameos Virtual On has gotten elsewhere (outside of indie circles) are more heavily based on MARZ than any other part of the series, namely in Super Robot Wars Alpha 3, in which the robots had human voices, and featured Hatter, who only appeared in MARZ.

During the early 2000s, Sega made new, Xbox-exclusive installments of previous franchises. While a lot of these installments were pretty good, these franchises were never seen again because they suffered from awful sales, so you could basically call the Xbox "The killing ground for Sega games". Examples:

Crazy Taxi 3: High Roller: While it got decent reviews, it sold poorly and other than a few ports of the first game on modern systems, there has not been another Crazy Taxi game since then.

Jet Set Radio Future, despite receiving large amounts of praise and a huge cult following, did not sell well (then again, it was kind of Sega's fault, they chose to advertise the Gamecube port of Sonic Adventure 2 more, making it very rare to see the JSRF commercial). When it and Sega GT 2002 were packaged with Xboxes during the Holiday season of 2002, it boosted sales, but still wasn't a top-seller, and the series never got a third installment.

Panzer Dragoon Orta: Just like Shenmue II and JSRF, it got lots of praise and a big cult following, but suffered from bad sales. Plus, a majority of the console's demographic wasn't into rail-shooters or fantasy settings anyway.

Shenmue II, as listed above, suffered from awful sales and ended with an unresolved cliffhanger.

Toe Jam And Earl 3: Mission to Earth: It wasn't just this game's sales that killed the series, it was also the fact that the game itself was very negatively received (by both critics and long-time TJ&E fans alike).

Betrayal at Krondor was never supposed to be part of a series, and the team that made it was disbanded before Sierra realized they had a hit on its hands. Once they saw how well it did, though, they decided to kick off an entire series with a sequel, Return to Krondor... which, unsurprisingly, was woefully unfinished and underpolished, making this a bad enough experience for Feist that he's been unwilling to risk a repeat experience.

Homeworld 2 didn't exactly flop, but it had a Troubled Production and the finished article failed to deliver on the promises of its early trailers. Sales were modest and critical reaction mixed at best, and despite rumours that they were open to the idea of a third game, Relic never quite got around to it before the company was wound up. But all is not lost, because the original Homeworld development team ended up forming their own company and started working on a Spiritual Successor of sorts called Hardware: Shipbreakers... at which point Gearbox Software, who'd acquired the Homeworld IP at publisher THQ's bankruptcy auction, offered them a deal to make it an official sequel.

Cool Boarders 2001 was the lowest-grossing entry in its franchise aside from the original game, and the last game released (to date) for the series. It featured an infamous Sequel Difficulty Spike comprised of Nintendo Hard trick challenges within the tutorial course and first stage, focused more on realism than any of the prior installments, and got lost in the shuffle during a glut of similarly-themed snowboarding games. Two other attempts to jumpstart the franchise bombed as well - Cool Boarders: Code Alien, an entry released the year before in Japan, never sold well enough to make the jump to North America, and Cool Boarders: Burrrn! (released as Rippin' Riders for the Sega Dreamcast) failed to make any impact. A planned sequel to 2001, Sold Out, was canned in early production, and the series hasn't seen another installment since.

Jet Moto 3 was a decent game, but it sold poorly, resulting in the planned fourth game being cancelled. So far, there are no plans to revive the series.

Front Mission Evolved crashed and burned hard, and its poor ratings/sales have more or less ended the future of Front Mission video games. For a while, the franchise soldiered on through other media, including the popular Dog Life & Dog Style manga (ironically, among all things, Evolved was panned for its terrible storytelling), but with the end of the manga series and many of the major Front Mission players all having left Square Enix, it's safe to say that the franchise is done for good.

Unlimited Saga was released in 2002, after a very long wait for an new entry in the franchise. While the game's art and music were amazing, the gameplay was questionable at best; an over-reliance on the incredibly gimmicky "Reel System" (which was used for everything from attacks to leveling up) and a skipped beta phase meant the game had a patched-together feel. It received generous reviews from Japanese publications, but only mediocre ones from American sources, and ended up with miserable sales. As a result, not only have the only new SaGa games been remakes of existing games in the series, but none have seen American release.

Xenogears was intended to be a 6-part series but was heavily underfunded and even the one installment we got was barely able to get completed by the deadline. Despite positive reception, the series was effectively dead since the creators left Square. It was attempted to be revived in a spiritual sequel known as Xenosaga, but that is another story (see the Namco Bandai section).

On November 6, 2012, THQ released a statement saying that Darksiders II needed to have sold over 4 million copies for them to even consider continuing the franchise, but it only sold 1.4 million. This is likely more because of the dire financial situation THQ was in at the time than the quality or reception of the game (both games enjoyed fairly high critical ratings), as the company had to file for bankruptcy only a month or so after the Darksiders statement. Whether or not this story has a positive ending depends on what its new publisher, Nordic Games (who won a last-minute bid for the series and its developer in the THQ auction), decides to do with it.

The death of the Destroy All Humans! series can be blamed squarely on two lackluster sequels - Big Willy Unleashed for the Wii, and then Path of the Furon for PS3/Xbox 360 - developed in 2008 after original developer Pandemic Studios was snapped up by Electronic Arts. Neither game managed to successfully capture the spirit of the first two games, and sold terribly as a result.

The MX vs. ATV franchise was killed off after the various changes in gameplay to MX vs. ATV: Alive left fans cold. A new game, MX vs. ATV: Supercross has been announced for a 2014 release under new publisher Nordic Games, time will tell if that game brings the series back from the dead.

Red Faction met an untimely end with the underwhelming reception of Armageddon and the multiplayer-focused Battlegroundsnote the latter being based on the successful Red Faction: Guerilla. Most of the negative reception from Armageddon came from it switching from the open-world destruction that made Red Faction: Guerrilla a hit to a generic underground corridor shooter. Ironic, considering the plan according to the developers was to bring the game back to its roots (for those who don't remember, the first two games were linear shooters).

Battle Assault 3 starring Gundam SEED is another case of a Video Game 3D Leap that killed off a fine series, though this game was fairly well received.

Blood II: The Chosen is the reason Caleb won't live again anytime soon.

Bubsy did well enough to get a few 2D sequels and a short-lived cartoon show. Then came Bubsy 3D, seen as one of the worst games ever made, which smashed head-first into the Polygon Ceiling and destroyed any possible future for the series as a whole.

The double whammy of Clayfighter 63 1/3 and Clayfighter X-Treme ultimately killed the Clay Fighter franchise. 63 1/3 was an Obvious Beta with dated graphics, annoying voice clips and broken gameplay. Although the game was a modest commercial success, its critical reception was very poor. So bad, in fact, that Interplay released a Director's Cut six months later that addressed some (but not all) of the gameplay and balancing issues of 63 1/3. Meanwhile, X-Treme never even saw release, since it was behind schedule. Other than the eventual Virtual Console release of the original, the series has been completely dormant ever since.

Crystal Kingdom Dizzy ended up being this for the Dizzy series of Spectrum games. A full-priced title with a drop in quality from the previous budget titles, its relative failure would mean the planned next game Wonderland Dizzy would never be released.

There was a fourth Descent game planned, but it was cancelled due to poor sales of Descent 3 and Interplay going bankrupt.

Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two is this for the Epic Mickey series, since its failure wiped out Junction Point entirely. A big reason was the fact that Epic Mickey 2 failed to fix any of the problems of its predecessor (unstable frame rate, camera and control problems, etc.) and added new issues on top of it. Probably a big reason it bombed and the development studio closed was because the designer, Warren Spector, thought that the game was perfect as it was and the technical problems were part of the game's charm. Critics and fans alike did not share his sentiments.

The Infinity series of visual novels by KID (Never7, Ever17, etc.) were doing well in spite of Executive Meddling and financial issues. A spinoff installment, 12Riven, sold less than spectacularly, putting an end to the series and bankrupting KID. KID was later bought off by CyberFront and released an official sequel called Code18 without the involvement of the series' previous writers.

Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laudestumbled into, but ultimately survived its transition into 3D. Its follow-up game, Box Office Bust, added platforming, shooting and brawling elements, none of which the game did well at all. Reviewers everywhere ripped the game apart, giving it some of the lowest composite scores of any game on PlayStation 3/Xbox 360, unintentionally making it the most apt title for a failing title. Don't quite think B.O.B.'s developers intended THAT sort of "bust". Also, creator Al Loweactually thanked Activision from keeping him and themselves away from development of the game, describing it as "the latest disaster" (referencing his dislike toward the way Sierra handled Magna Cum Laude).

Lunar: Dragon Song seems to have done this for the Lunar series; stemming from poor sales, bad reviews, and absurd gameplay mechanics. There hasn't been a non-remake Lunar title since Dragon Song's release.

The ninth installment of the main Might and Magic series is generally regarded as the reason New World Computing stuck with the Heroes spinoff from then on; this was mainly due to the fact that the graphics of the engine had to be extensively upgraded in order to compete. However, all of the company's resources went into that and not into, say, a very good plot.

A large part of the reason for the game's state was the fact that 3DO was well on its way to going down at the time and the game was in fact released after the last Heroes by NWC. That said, it did probably contribute to the fact that the company who picked up the IP didn't do any party-based role-playing games with it until a decade later.

Myth III: The Wolf Age wasn't especially terrible, though it was significantly worse than the first two, and used the much-reviled Gamespy Arcade for multiplayer instead of Bungie.net, killing all hopes for a fourth installment.

Majin Tensei was a decently-received Shin Megami Tensei spinoff in the Strategy RPG genre, which ended up doing well enough to receive one more successful sequel. Then came Ronde for the Saturn. Development was farmed out to Access while Atlus worked on other games, resulting in a game so legendarily awful that the release of a preview demo caused literally thousands of canceled preorders — numbers that were virtually unprecedented in Japan at the time. Not only did it kill the Majin Tensei series (the only release in the series since was a cell phone game that came out 10 years later), but Atlus wouldn't release another Strategy RPG Mega Ten until Devil Survivor, twelve years later, which had entirely different gameplay from the earlier series to boot.

While SNK had previously attempted to move the Samurai Shodown franchise into the third dimension with Samurai Shodown 64 on the Hyper Neo-Geo 64 arcade board with limited success (average review scores, but new characters Shiki and Asura have appeared in other SNK games, such as Neo Geo Battle Coliseum), most of the other games in the series were strictly 2D until they tried again with Samurai Shodown Sen (an interquel to the SamSho 64 games) more than a decade later. The game was a flop, with reviewers criticizing Sen for its confusing controls, poor character balancing, and ugly graphics.

Turok: Evolution managed to kill off the Turok franchise, no thanks to silly elements such as Tobias Bruckner, the cyborg cowboy riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex, along with the game's numerous other problems. It's probably no coincidence that publisher Acclaimwent bankrupt shortly after the release of this and BMX XXX. The 2008 Turok relaunch wasn't a bad game, exactly — it just had the bad luck to be an average shooter during a time when great shooters were glutting the market. A sequel was planned, but was cancelled.

Vietcong 2, which got lower reviews than the original or Fist Alpha thanks to its dumbed-down gameplay.

Virtual Hydlide, the attempted reboot of Hydlide in 3D, killed off a series that had been moderately well appreciated in Japan during the 8-bit era.

This nearly happened to the Ys series, with the fifth installment, Kefin, The Lost City of Sand. Kefin, perhaps, wasn't bad bad - but the game was only available on the Super Nintendo (with a franchise that had deep roots on the PC and PC Engine), had very bland, generic graphics that looked like every other game of its era (which was even worse in context since the setting was supposed to be very exotic) and the music was all simple MIDI-synth (when Ys had become famous partly due to its powerful CD-supported Red Book-audio soundtracks). Fan backlash in Japan was intense, and it would be seven years before a new Ys game was made; the only thing that prevented the total death of the franchise was the good performance of remakes of the first two games, which were already in development when Kefin came out and were put out to recoup development costs.

Zoo Tycoon 2 underwhelmed critics and gamers alike and wasn't as popular as its predecessor game. After several years and four expansion packs, Microsoft put the franchise on hold and ended its contract with developer Blue Fang Games, which would ultimately collapse the studio and make the scenario of a reboot unlikely. Microsoft then successfully rebooted the franchise with Frontier Developments in 2013, releasing an updated Zoo Tycoon to Xbox 360 and Xbox One, and are developing a port for Windows 8 and Windows Phone as well.

One Must Fall 2097 was widely considered one of the best PC exclusive fighting games of its era, thanks to the novelty of the premise and fairly tight game design. It was also one of the earliest games to feature a 'rehit' mode, similar to the modern extended aerial combo system. Its developers, Diversions Entertainment, attempted to keep the streak alive with One Must Fall Battlegrounds, a game that hit the Polygon Ceiling so hard that it left an imprint of its box art on the glass. Dodgy controls, bland audio work, and an overall unpolished feel meant abysmal sales, which killed the One Must Fall franchise stone dead after the game escaped seven years in Development Hell. It also put Diversions Entertainment out of business, so it's a Creator Killer as well.

If you're still confused over why it's considered a Franchise Killer, let's just say this; up until Beast Machines, all Transformers franchises were made in or spun off from ones made in the West; afterBeast Machines, no Transformers series would be developed in the West until almost a decade later.

Blue's Clues has several moments that potentially killed the show. Steve Burns leaving was the first one. For some reason, some parents just didn't find Donovan Patton Adorkable enough. However, the show managed to pull on for another 5 years with Patton as host. The second, more clearer one, was the Spin-Off into Blue's Room in 2006. The many changes made to the spinoff- specifically, non-appearance of many of the cast from the main show and that Blue can now talk, aside from the change to puppetry, gave the franchise one year to live before production of both shows ceased in 2007 and the franchise slowly pattering off into obscurity.

Ever wondered why you don't hear much about Felix the Cat anymore outside of merchandising or that 2004 direct-to-video film? You can pin the blame on the failure of Felix the Cat: The Movie. Lull Destruction, poor animation and lip-syncing, a Random Events Plot (and a poorly executed one at that) and numerous plot holes can make this movie painful to watch for even the most avid Felix fan. The 90's cartoon The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat attempted to revive the franchise, but an unsuccessful retool in the second season quickly brought Felix to an early grave yet again.

Even before those was the failure of the early 30's sound cartoons; Pat Sullivan made little effort to upgrade the Felix cartoons to sound (not helped by his private life being in shambles due to his wife's alleged suicide and his heavy alcoholism) and when he did, they were rushed, sloppy, and far behind the times, resulting in the Felix cartoon series getting forgotten by the far more popular Mickey Mouse shorts—Sullivan's subsequent death put the final nail in the coffin for his animation studio. An attempt to revive the cartoons was done in the mid 1930's by Van Beuren Studios; while the cartoons were seemingly well received despite having little in common with the character's previous appearances, when RKO negated Van Beuren's contract in favor of distributing Disney, it caused Van Beuren to go belly-up, thus sending Felix to an early grave yet again, after only three color shorts. What caused the franchise to not fully die out, is that whilst the cartoons were put on ice, Felix still ran in newspaper and magazine comics for quite a long time.

After the second season of Gargoyles, creator Greg Weisman jumped ship, and a third season called Gargoyles: The Goliath Chronicles sank the franchise on TV. Greg wrote a comic series to replace the third season, but unfortunately it didn't sell well enough to keep up once Disney hiked up the licensing fee.

The Holly Hobbie And Friends direct-to-DVD series has an interesting case of this when the producers of the show decided to change several aspects of the franchise from the fifth DVD on. Said DVD, Fabulous Fashion Show, was so badly reviewed across the board, with an overall 1.3/5 on Amazon with 18 reviews, compared to 4+ star averages for the others, that it all but killed the franchise. The subsequent DVD, Marvelous Makeover, rebounded to 3.3 stars, but the various changes that had been made to the series, such as moving to 22 minute stories and replacing most of the voices, were still generally poorly regarded. Making things worse was the shoddy voice replacement job- the new cast sounds nothing like the old one, and while they opted to use a Non-Singing Voice for the titular character, the singing voice and speaking voice wasn't even matched either. Aside from that, the characterizations were all botched and the characters were passing the Idiot Ball around. The show's final picture book release was seen a bit later in 2008, and afterwards, production on all media was discontinued entirely.

Universal released an animated The Jetsons feature film in 1990, complete with Conspicuous CG, a Green Aesop played out with a Gang of Critters that was essentially a rewrite of an old episode of Star Trek, and reuniting nearly all of the original cast members save for '80s pop starlet Tiffany voicing Judy Jetson thanks to Executive Meddling. The film also marked the last performance ever of noted voice artist Mel Blanc (Mr. Spacely), who was still recording while in the hospital (as he had years before then) and died before the film was completed, as well as George O'Hanlon (George), who by that point had to have the lines read and acted to him before recording, who also passed away before he could quite finish the film. Both Blanc and O'Hanlon's remaining lines had to be completed by a sound-alike. Penny Singleton did not die during production like Blanc and O'Hanlon, but the movie remained her last acting role until her death thirteen years later. Coming on the heels of the 1980s Jetsons revival (the new syndicated episodes and two TV movies), this film's disappointing box office and harsh critical reviews were apparently enough to send the franchise back into hibernation. It has stayed there ever since, a potential live-action film being stuck in Development Hell for years notwithstanding.

In a rare example of a character being a one-person Franchise Killer, Elmyra managed to be the prime cause for the untimely demise of Pinky and the Brain. This is even pointed out in the new theme song for Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain:

The negative reception and ratings failure of Planet Sheen has killed off all interest in the Jimmy Neutron franchise in the forseeable future.

The abrupt cancellation of Ren & Stimpy: Adult Party Cartoon put the series on the kibosh, as no plans to revive the series have come about. The lackluster sales of the DVD sets didn't help this. It also helped put an early end to the entirety of the then-new Spike's animation block, thus taking down Stripperella (which was also hampered by a lawsuit) and Gary the Rat along with it, although the former was at least popular enough once it hit DVD.

The ratings failure of Super Mario World, along with the cancellation of Captain N: The Game Master and the closure of NBC's Saturday morning cartoon block, killed off any further attempts to keep the Super Mario Bros. on television. The only subsequent Super Mario Bros.-related television series made since then was The Super Mario Challenge, a live-action game show from the United Kingdom that aired and ended around the same time as World.

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